Using a Compact Flash card on a600/a1200 IDE - Page 3

pbareges · 24 September 2006, 01:50

i just installed one 4gb sandisk pretty much standard on my 1200. from specs i found on the web, speed seems ok as the card was designed in 2004 so that it feets required standards....setup was fine...i set maxtransfer to 1fe00 as usual....and tested it ....

it seems to work pretty much fine...my only trouble is that i get half of the troubles i had with my hd when i forgot to set maxtransfer to 1fe00....
myst is working whereas on my hd without maxtransfer set it was not working....BUT old jst hd installs don't work as they used to do on my hd with maxtransfer correctly set up....do i have to lower maxtransfer because of CF standards ? what would you suggest ?

Zetr0 · 24 September 2006, 02:12

hmmm

I set mine to 0x01f, this sorts out pretty much most of the issues I had with suposed checksum errors, and write errors.

the largest size I have setup is only 2GB (sandisk) but i believe that its pretty standard for most of them.

todate I have setup 8 differing CF cards to RUN *classic* amiga OS all using the max transfers set at 0x01f.

When i first started setting up CF cards i noticed a simialr problem where some applications would work but others like whd or jst would not.. then after teaking the max transfers i found it settled nicely with the 0x01f setting.

pbareges · 24 September 2006, 14:17

you mean 1f or 1fe00 or 1f000 ? thx..is'nt 1f very slow?

Zetr0 · 24 September 2006, 16:01

heys pbareges,

after checking my current set up.. the max transfers is
0x1fe000. max transfers is not about speed but the block size that can be transmitted with one command.

for more info see this thread http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=19675

if you are still getting issues with the card reduce the max transfers an octet to 0x1fc, then 0xf1b and so on... if however you still have issues it could well be the card age or compatibility.

pbareges · 24 September 2006, 16:17

works great!! thk you very much.... but i thought that you could not go over 1fe00 for hds in order not to overflow the ide controller? is it just that i wrote it down wrong, missing one zero...does the same apply to regular hds (ie should i change it from 1fe00 to 1fe000 for my hds ?)

thanks again mate!

Zetr0 · 25 September 2006, 02:30

if you are having problems with you HDD's after a basic setup via HDTOOLS i would try changing the max transfers to see if it helps.. it wont hurt any

other than maybe at worst a re-install

(and of 10MB/MO it dont take that long)

ElectroBlaster · 25 September 2006, 15:25

@Zetro

Im hunting for a cf ide that can sit in either a 3.5" pc case bay, Have you ever come accross any? The idea I have is to mount one on the left hand side of an a1200 and cut the slot for it. If all goes to plan it will look good

Zetr0 · 26 September 2006, 13:41

It will look awsome!

I do so toy with the idea, of using a *modified* 3.5 bay on the side but i fear some one else will realise this first

as i dont have any usable A1200 cases.

all mine got towered long ago.. and plastics got destroyed in one of the many sucessive moves. i resuce d an amiga from the local refuse yard, its plastic had been badly damaged (been thrown arround) and the mobo was cracked at the end (where the mouse was).. but after 4 hours of surgery with a soldering iron, strip header pins, and a pcb cutter ... it fired up

))

its now running 3.1 roms as my latest little project (s000 sooo close to completion).. unfortunately I couldn't save the keyboard or the floppy drive...

but yes..( a lil off topic there) by using some of the cf adpters out there they have mounting holes soooo with a smidge luck you could build your own mounting bracket inside the a1200 *right ontop of the PCMCIA port

*for those extra style points*.

(quickly draws pic)

the thing is its SO THERE it should be done!

)

you could use an old floppy drive swing sleave (the bit the floppy disk pushes outa the way ) in the inside so it looks nice and flush on the outside

) now thats a 10/10 MOD

need an adapter like the one in the diagram ? well zetr0's here to fill your need with this linkie

ElectroBlaster · 26 September 2006, 15:37

Now thats a dam good idea for the mod and its so good im going to do it

I bought this cf ide adaptor:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-side-Compact...QQcmdZViewItem

I noticed the one in your link has a metal shield over one of the ports...
Anyway when mine turns up I shall get it all done

Zetr0 · 27 September 2006, 02:22

Good luck with it ElectroBlaster, I look forward to seeing the PIC's

i just love pics...

specifically modding pics... just love 'em i tells ya.. and if the pcmcia port thingy inspired you, you can thank yourself as i was just thinking on how to get the cable out of the A12 so that it looked nice..

can't wait to see it... i almost have itchy fingers thinking about it... wanna borrow my dremel 'n suff lol...

ElectroBlaster · 28 September 2006, 11:12

I got a dremel m8 but thanx for offering to lend me yours
Im going to use some small files to open up the pcmcia slot a bit, im pretty fussy with getting it right so im going to try and make it look stock as possible. Im done with bits hanging out of amigas, tower and such.

I really like the idea of an a1200 with internal laptop cd, cf card, I just wish I never got rid of my cdtv keyboard because I wouldve swapped all the keytops over and vynil dyed the 1200 case black

ElectroBlaster · 02 October 2006, 22:46

Ok news update, The cf ide adaptor I bought from ebay arrived this morning. I havent been able to test it yet.

I have two cf cards, one is 16mb and the other is 32mb (both piddly small but will do for testing) the 32mb is a kingston so I will report back how it works and I will also log down exactly what I do

EDIT: Just noticed yours is a pcmcia adaptor... I might be able to get my hands on one of these adaptors aswell

Brass · 10 October 2006, 12:27

This may be a tidge obvious but did anyone tell the chap who started this thread to remember to make sure his jumpers on his master drive to Master with slave present otherwise the CF card wouldnt have been recognised anyway as the system wouldnot have checked past the 1st device.

My .02$ worth

BTW: Could someone please upload the software to the zone for dealing with CF cards via PCMCIA mine isnt recognised for some reason and I would like to get it sorted caus its slowing down my HDD.

Cheers

pbareges · 26 October 2006, 16:31

back for trouble...after a few weeks of tests, i'm sorry to say that the maxtransfer setup to 1fe000 didn't solve my problem. i get random success / failures in reading large amounts of data from my ide mounted cf card. I've read a lot of things about the a1200 ide port and from what i found it's not safe to set the maxtransfer to values greater than 1fe00(128K) as the a1200 ide controller is not able to deal with larger blocks anyway..so i switched back to 1fe00 and i'm still stuck with this issue.
So for the techies out there:

- how is it possible that any hd given 1fe00 maxtransfer is following the block size restriction and not cf cards through ide ?
- from what i read in another thread, could an ide buffered interface solve this problem ? (i don't think from what seems to define and ide buffered interface but as it seems to have solved another user similar problems...)

thanks again guys!

philippe.

Zetr0 · 26 October 2006, 17:38

Heys pbareges,

All my ide devices go through an ide buffered device

pbareges · 27 October 2006, 17:29

thanks! will try it....though i only have 1 ide device!

pbareges · 02 November 2006, 14:03

sorry to bother you again but the ide buffered interface didn't solve my problem...would you mind testing one of the jst installs i have troubles with your cf card ? (yojoe install posted in the zone) :

when starting the game from workbench, it works one out of ten times
when starting the game from boot with no startup-sequence cli, it works 5 out of ten times
when copying the game directory to RAM: and starting it from there it works all the time....

please let me know if you have the same troubles and if you have an idea of what may be the problem ....

thanks in advance,

philippe.

dlfrsilver · 02 November 2006, 14:15

let down JST ! use whdload !

pbareges · 02 November 2006, 14:51

scanning my whole setup for jst installs and replacing them with whd ones (when available) would take me an amount of time i'm not able to spend!! there must be a way to fix this!

Zetr0 · 02 November 2006, 15:00

Heys pbareges,

I have to admit my friend that I use WHD and not JST as i found JST is it at best unstable.

even when I ran it from a native 2.5" 810MB & 500MB hard disk.

insofar as replacing JST for WHD, i just donwloaded the WHD games pack (about 3.7GB of games NICE!!!!! ) mentioning this i need to update this as its about a year old.

I use a PC with winuae and make it AMIGA friendly with tree like structure so its quick to find a game and doesn't eat that much chip ram either

26 September 2006, 13:41	#48
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	Moddin' IT A1200 Style :) It will look awsome! I do so toy with the idea, of using a modified 3.5 bay on the side but i fear some one else will realise this first as i dont have any usable A1200 cases. all mine got towered long ago.. and plastics got destroyed in one of the many sucessive moves. i resuce d an amiga from the local refuse yard, its plastic had been badly damaged (been thrown arround) and the mobo was cracked at the end (where the mouse was).. but after 4 hours of surgery with a soldering iron, strip header pins, and a pcb cutter ... it fired up )) its now running 3.1 roms as my latest little project (s000 sooo close to completion).. unfortunately I couldn't save the keyboard or the floppy drive... but yes..( a lil off topic there) by using some of the cf adpters out there they have mounting holes soooo with a smidge luck you could build your own mounting bracket inside the a1200 right ontop of the PCMCIA port for those extra style points. (quickly draws pic) the thing is its SO THERE it should be done! ) you could use an old floppy drive swing sleave (the bit the floppy disk pushes outa the way ) in the inside so it looks nice and flush on the outside ) now thats a 10/10 MOD need an adapter like the one in the diagram ? well zetr0's here to fill your need with this linkie Attached Thumbnails Last edited by Zetr0; 26 September 2006 at 14:00. Reason: added link action!*

26 September 2006, 15:37	#49
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,705	Now thats a dam good idea for the mod and its so good im going to do it I bought this cf ide adaptor: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-side-Compact...QQcmdZViewItem I noticed the one in your link has a metal shield over one of the ports... Anyway when mine turns up I shall get it all done Last edited by ElectroBlaster; 26 September 2006 at 15:43.

10 October 2006, 12:27	#53
Brass Zone Friend Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: New Zealand Posts: 55	Slave present This may be a tidge obvious but did anyone tell the chap who started this thread to remember to make sure his jumpers on his master drive to Master with slave present otherwise the CF card wouldnt have been recognised anyway as the system wouldnot have checked past the 1st device. My .02$ worth BTW: Could someone please upload the software to the zone for dealing with CF cards via PCMCIA mine isnt recognised for some reason and I would like to get it sorted caus its slowing down my HDD. Cheers Last edited by Brass; 10 October 2006 at 13:10.

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24 September 2006, 01:50	#41
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	i just installed one 4gb sandisk pretty much standard on my 1200. from specs i found on the web, speed seems ok as the card was designed in 2004 so that it feets required standards....setup was fine...i set maxtransfer to 1fe00 as usual....and tested it .... it seems to work pretty much fine...my only trouble is that i get half of the troubles i had with my hd when i forgot to set maxtransfer to 1fe00.... myst is working whereas on my hd without maxtransfer set it was not working....BUT old jst hd installs don't work as they used to do on my hd with maxtransfer correctly set up....do i have to lower maxtransfer because of CF standards ? what would you suggest ?

24 September 2006, 02:12	#42
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	hmmm I set mine to 0x01f, this sorts out pretty much most of the issues I had with suposed checksum errors, and write errors. the largest size I have setup is only 2GB (sandisk) but i believe that its pretty standard for most of them. todate I have setup 8 differing CF cards to RUN classic amiga OS all using the max transfers set at 0x01f. When i first started setting up CF cards i noticed a simialr problem where some applications would work but others like whd or jst would not.. then after teaking the max transfers i found it settled nicely with the 0x01f setting.

24 September 2006, 14:17	#43
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	you mean 1f or 1fe00 or 1f000 ? thx..is'nt 1f very slow?

24 September 2006, 16:01	#44
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	heys pbareges, after checking my current set up.. the max transfers is 0x1fe000. max transfers is not about speed but the block size that can be transmitted with one command. for more info see this thread http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=19675 if you are still getting issues with the card reduce the max transfers an octet to 0x1fc, then 0xf1b and so on... if however you still have issues it could well be the card age or compatibility.

24 September 2006, 16:17	#45
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	works great!! thk you very much.... but i thought that you could not go over 1fe00 for hds in order not to overflow the ide controller? is it just that i wrote it down wrong, missing one zero...does the same apply to regular hds (ie should i change it from 1fe00 to 1fe000 for my hds ?) thanks again mate!

25 September 2006, 02:30	#46
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	if you are having problems with you HDD's after a basic setup via HDTOOLS i would try changing the max transfers to see if it helps.. it wont hurt any other than maybe at worst a re-install (and of 10MB/MO it dont take that long)

25 September 2006, 15:25	#47
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,705	@Zetro Im hunting for a cf ide that can sit in either a 3.5" pc case bay, Have you ever come accross any? The idea I have is to mount one on the left hand side of an a1200 and cut the slot for it. If all goes to plan it will look good

27 September 2006, 02:22	#50
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	Good luck with it ElectroBlaster, I look forward to seeing the PIC's i just love pics... specifically modding pics... just love 'em i tells ya.. and if the pcmcia port thingy inspired you, you can thank yourself as i was just thinking on how to get the cable out of the A12 so that it looked nice.. can't wait to see it... i almost have itchy fingers thinking about it... wanna borrow my dremel 'n suff lol...

28 September 2006, 11:12	#51
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,705	I got a dremel m8 but thanx for offering to lend me yours Im going to use some small files to open up the pcmcia slot a bit, im pretty fussy with getting it right so im going to try and make it look stock as possible. Im done with bits hanging out of amigas, tower and such. I really like the idea of an a1200 with internal laptop cd, cf card, I just wish I never got rid of my cdtv keyboard because I wouldve swapped all the keytops over and vynil dyed the 1200 case black

02 October 2006, 22:46	#52
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,705	Ok news update, The cf ide adaptor I bought from ebay arrived this morning. I havent been able to test it yet. I have two cf cards, one is 16mb and the other is 32mb (both piddly small but will do for testing) the 32mb is a kingston so I will report back how it works and I will also log down exactly what I do EDIT: Just noticed yours is a pcmcia adaptor... I might be able to get my hands on one of these adaptors aswell

26 October 2006, 16:31	#54
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	back for trouble...after a few weeks of tests, i'm sorry to say that the maxtransfer setup to 1fe000 didn't solve my problem. i get random success / failures in reading large amounts of data from my ide mounted cf card. I've read a lot of things about the a1200 ide port and from what i found it's not safe to set the maxtransfer to values greater than 1fe00(128K) as the a1200 ide controller is not able to deal with larger blocks anyway..so i switched back to 1fe00 and i'm still stuck with this issue. So for the techies out there: - how is it possible that any hd given 1fe00 maxtransfer is following the block size restriction and not cf cards through ide ? - from what i read in another thread, could an ide buffered interface solve this problem ? (i don't think from what seems to define and ide buffered interface but as it seems to have solved another user similar problems...) thanks again guys! philippe.

26 October 2006, 17:38	#55
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	Heys pbareges, All my ide devices go through an ide buffered device

27 October 2006, 17:29	#56
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	thanks! will try it....though i only have 1 ide device!

02 November 2006, 14:03	#57
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	sorry to bother you again but the ide buffered interface didn't solve my problem...would you mind testing one of the jst installs i have troubles with your cf card ? (yojoe install posted in the zone) : when starting the game from workbench, it works one out of ten times when starting the game from boot with no startup-sequence cli, it works 5 out of ten times when copying the game directory to RAM: and starting it from there it works all the time.... please let me know if you have the same troubles and if you have an idea of what may be the problem .... thanks in advance, philippe.

02 November 2006, 14:15	#58
dlfrsilver CaptainM68K-SPS France Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Melun nearby Paris/France Age: 46 Posts: 10,412	let down JST ! use whdload !

02 November 2006, 14:51	#59
pbareges Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: montreal / canada Age: 47 Posts: 722	scanning my whole setup for jst installs and replacing them with whd ones (when available) would take me an amount of time i'm not able to spend!! there must be a way to fix this!

02 November 2006, 15:00	#60
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	Heys pbareges, I have to admit my friend that I use WHD and not JST as i found JST is it at best unstable. even when I ran it from a native 2.5" 810MB & 500MB hard disk. insofar as replacing JST for WHD, i just donwloaded the WHD games pack (about 3.7GB of games NICE!!!!! ) mentioning this i need to update this as its about a year old. I use a PC with winuae and make it AMIGA friendly with tree like structure so its quick to find a game and doesn't eat that much chip ram either

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